Flamingo

The environmental crisis as a crisis of identity

Original photograph by Yeray Seminario, design by Wietske Merison

The environment - what an odd word, isn’t it? The term stems from the Old French environer, ‘to surround, enclose, encircle.’ It’s a word we use for all that is not ‘us’ - all that environs us: our surroundings.

At first glance, the term makes sense and is easy to use. When you pollute your surroundings, such as by spilling oil in the Niger Delta, like Shell, or by littering your local river, you act in a way that is ‘not good for the environment.’ But the closer we examine the concept, the less it seems to make sense.

Almost everyone knows the famous pink, long-legged family of birds we call Flamingos. Their name, Flamingo, derives from the Spanish or Portuguese flamengo, which means ‘flame-colored’. Some species, like the American Flamingo, are a bright, fiery shade of pink, whereas others, like the Greater Flamingo, are more pastel-colored. This most distinctive feature of their identity, their pink color, is not actually a part of their genetic makeup. It is, instead, a direct result of their ‘environment.’

Flamingos are filter feeders, like baleen whales. They place their heads upside down in the water and move them side-to-side. As they do this, they use their tongue to pump water in and out of their bills. With the comb-like plates along the edges of their bills, they filter the water, leaving only the food inside their bills. Their diet mainly consists of algae and brine shrimp, which contain a high number of carotenoids. This natural pigment that makes carrots orange and tomatoes red is the reason Flamingos’ feathers turn pink.

In our individualized Western societies, we often conceive of identity as an individual phenomenon. As a modern-day rite of passage, we ask ourselves, “Who am I?”, hoping to find the answer by ourselves, perhaps even within ourselves. We ask ourselves, “What makes me unique? What distinguishes me from the rest?” and we search for labels that fit our uniqueness just right and give us a sense of narcissistic purpose. Then, when those superficial labels we attached to our sense of self perish or change, we sink into a crisis, circling back to that dreaded question: “Who am I?”, sometimes briefly visiting the realms of “Why am I?”, and in our darkest moments, perhaps dipping our toes into “Do I even want to be?”.

In the 20th century, the term ‘environment’ was first used in the West to abstractly refer to ‘the natural world’ as something other than ‘us’. But where do ‘we’ end, and where does our ‘environment’ begin? When we drink water from our local environments, does it magically become ‘us’ at the moment it slides through our throats and becomes sixty percent of who ‘we’ physically are? Or were the strawberries I just ate already a part of ‘me’ when I planted their seeds in my garden? Should those same strawberries, then, be credited as the authors of this paper, because it is the energy they created and contained that makes my fingers able to write these words? When I bleed, does my very own blood, outside of my body, then become my ‘environment’? What about the river of my tears, the wind of my breath, and the waves of my laughter?

In the worldview of ‘humanity versus the environment’, the famous Spanish dance ‘the flamenco’ is ‘culture’, but the similarly passionate mating dance of Flamingos is ‘nature’. Before the relatively new field of environmental studies, there was the field of ecology. Ecology is a term that stems from the Ancient Greek terms for οἶκος (oîkos) 'house', and λογία (logía) 'study of'. The ‘house’ that is studied is the house of creation, containing all living organisms, from human beings to strawberries to Flamingos, under its wide roof. Ecology focuses on the study of relationships within the various ecosystems or smaller rooms in the bigger house of creation. From a true ecological perspective, the flamenco is as much a part of the ecosystem of Southern Spain as Flamingos are.

The crisis facing our world today is not just a crisis that takes place in ‘the environment’. It is a crisis facing everything and everyone. Economy and ecology deal with the same house. Environmental degradation is human degradation, natural degradation is cultural degradation, and ecological degradation is economic degradation. Environmental injustice is simply injustice. It is not just a coincidence that our current worldwide loss of biodiversity is paired with a simultaneous loss of local cultures and customs, or that industrial capitalism exploits the bodies of human workers just like it exploits bodies of land, water, and air. Pesticides are toxic to human and non-human animals alike. Natural and cultural diversity perish hand in hand because this crisis is not just caused by plastic straws and won’t be solved by metal ones either. The cause of this crisis is kufr (denial) and shirk (idolatry) and it can only be solved by shukr (gratitude) and tawhid (oneness).

We have denied the truth of who we are as mere inhabitants of the house of creation who can either do right or wrong in their relationships with themselves, other living beings, and their Creator. We can make this crisis as complex and compartmentalized as we want it to be, but from an Islamic perspective, it simply boils down to sin. Too many human beings in positions of relative privilege have become lazy worshippers of the idols of power, wealth, and ego. Instead of treading lightly upon the earth, they have come to spread corruption upon her surface, and have come to deny, divide, and pollute the the oneness of the oîkos, the oneness of the house.

Surah Ar-Rum, ‘The Romans’, the thirtieth chapter of the Qur’an, warned us that exactly this would happen. “Corruption has spread on land and sea as a result of what people’s hands have done, so that God may cause them to taste (the consequences of) some of their deeds and perhaps they might return (to righteousness)” (Qur’an 30:41). Now, as we are faced with the consequences of the ever-increasing greed of global industrialized capitalism, we have reached a crossroads. This is the moment the Qur’an predicted, our moment, right here, right now. Do we change our ways now that we taste the consequences of corruption spreading throughout our common house like wildfire? Or do we simply add more oil, coal, and gas to the flames? Do we make the problem a problem of our natural surroundings, or do we finally dare look in the mirror and realize that we are our environment? Will we pray for the tide to turn, or will we realize that we are the tide, and turn?